


The Ties That Bind

by cathouse_mary



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Rimming, dub-con, foodsmut, half-naked sex, sex in public places, wanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-12 00:34:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/118857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cathouse_mary/pseuds/cathouse_mary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place between the events in Deathly Hallows and the epilogue. Auror Harry and Unspeakable Draco must learn to get past their previous disagreements and work together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ties That Bind

**Author's Note:**

> With deepest thanks to my friend and beta. She helped me out of a horrid jam with her advice, gave me the benefit of her innate comma sense and her mad skills. *crushy hearts*
> 
> Whitten for the 2009 HP_Yule Balls exchange.

**Author:** [](http://chaos-rose.livejournal.com/profile)[**chaos_rose**](http://chaos-rose.livejournal.com/)  
 **Recipient:** [](http://yumekutteikt.livejournal.com/profile)[**yumekutteikt**](http://yumekutteikt.livejournal.com/)  
 **Title:** The Ties That Bind  
 **Rating:** NC-17  
 **Pairing(s):** Harry/Draco, previous Harry/OC, previous Draco/OC.  
 **Disclaimer:** All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended. All characters engaging in sexual activity are 16 years or older.  
 **Summary:** Takes place between the events in Deathly Hallows and the epilogue. Auror Harry and Unspeakable Draco must learn to get past their previous disagreements and work together.  
 **Warnings:** (highlight to view) *hurt/comfort, wanking, rimming, dub-con, half-naked sex, foodsmut, and sex in public places.*  
 **Word Count:** 12,384  
 **Author's Notes:** With deepest thanks to my friend and beta. She helped me out of a horrid jam with her advice, gave me the benefit of her innate comma sense and her mad skills. *crushy hearts*

Yumekutteikt, the things you asked for included hurt/comfort, wanking, rimming, dub-con, half-naked sex, foodsmut, and sex in public places. I hope you enjoy your story and have a lovely holiday.

 ** The Ties That Bind **

Minister Shacklebolt gave a mental sigh, regarded the pair before him over steepled fingers, and reminded himself that he had _wanted_ the job and the responsibility. He reminded himself that the Wizarding world had needed someone who had been neither Gryffindor nor Slytherin to guide it through a time of repair and reform. The two snarling at each other across his desk were a textbook example of the problems that persisted some three years after the Battle of Hogwarts. Auror versus Unspeakable. Gryffindor versus Slytherin. Halfblood versus Pureblood. In the those years, where a story would posit a happily-ever-after, it was still dragged-kicking-and-screaming when it was not fought-tooth-and-nail.

  
He took a deep breath and mastered the almost overwhelming impulse to bang their stubborn heads together until they cracked like walnuts.

  
"Auror Potter, Unspeakable Malfoy." He spoke as if the urge had never existed, and both at least had the grace to look abashed for all of a minute. A minute was all he allowed them. "I expect the both of you to put aside your mutual - and might I add, juvenile - antagonism and do your duty as the professional young men you are supposed to be. Yes, your investigations have intersected, and both of you will stringently practise inter-departmental co-operation as requested _by your superiors_." He allowed an unspoken 'or else' to hang in the pause before he asked, "Have I made myself clear?"

  
God help him, both of them saw fit to open their mouths.

  
"Dismissed."

  
The mouths shut with twin snaps as Potter looked at Malfoy and Malfoy looked back at Potter.

  
"Gentlemen, I know that word is in your vocabulary. Furthermore, it was not a request, it was a direct order. Each time you end up here, it is not for the brilliant performance of your duties, but that you are fighting the same old schoolboy battles with roughly the same results." Both had been through the wringer in those seven years, yes, but neither of these boys needed any more coddling. "You're both twenty-one years of age, and intelligent enough to succeed in highly demanding professions. It's time and past time you both grew up. Now, for your own sakes and the safety of those around you, do get on with it. _Dismissed_."

  
~

  
There was a time to push it, and a time to not push it. This, Draco knew, was a time not to push it. So he bowed to the Minister - a solid, respectable Hufflepuff, thank the Lord - and made haste to the elevators. The sooner he was out of sight, the sooner other matters could obscure him from Minister Shacklebolt's thoughts, he was quite certain. Years after the Battle of Hogwarts, there were loose ends, and some of those loose ends quite dangerous. There were Dark artefacts, cursed items and the persons either hoarding or trafficking in them, not to mention the rude surprise that some of the followers of Tom Riddle turned out to never have been marked at all. Worse, some of them were still within the Ministry, as they had all found when Minister Shacklebolt had nearly been murdered in his office by a file clerk only last year.

  
As much delight as it might give him to see Saint Harry thrown from the saddle of his high horse, Draco knew he would get a mud bath simply by virtue of being in intimate proximity to the situation. Blast Potter. This was his investigation, a delicate affair in need of subtle handling, some diplomacy, and an incidental sprinkling of galleons into the correct hands. There was a way, a sense of timing, a manner that needed careful thought.

  
"Which is, of course, not your _forte_ , being an uproar... do pardon me, Potter, I meant being an auror." Aurors were a uniformed rugby team at the best of times, really. Subtle was just not in it, though the late Rufus Scrimgeour had come as close as a Gryffindor might manage. "This is going to take skill, not blind luck - something about which you know exceptionally little."

  
The flush that crawled out of Potter's collar and rose to his hairline was satisfying out of all proportion to the insult and Draco could feel his lips curve in a small smile. This was a chance to make a mark for himself, to restore some of the family name, and to truly separate himself from his father's deeds. It was a chance that - no matter what - he could not, must not lose.

  
"You are not taking this from me, Potter." Their walk to the elevator was less a walk than a race, words escaping clenched jaws and hands bound into fists in the sleeves of their robes. "Interfere and I swear before God that your broom will be up you sideways."

  
A muscle in Potter's jaw jumped as he gritted out, "This from a man with a broom-head shaped like a size-queen's butt plug."

  
"Tsk. So vulgar, Potty, and what do you know about size queens and butt plugs, hm? Sounds like an expressed preference to me. Goodness, the things you never imagine..." Draco reached the elevator and pressed the call button first, thus forcing Potter to press it after him. "That won't make it come more quickly, you know."

  
"Something you'd know about, Malfoy."

  
"Predictable, Potter. You really must work on your repartee, or at least drag it out of the gutter." The elevator arrived, scarcely opening before Draco jammed himself through and hit the button for the ninth floor, causing the door to slam on Potter's person, knocking those silly glasses askew. "Do catch up, Potter."

  
The charge caught Draco quite by surprise, his back slamming against the wood paneling as the doors slid closed and the car descended.

  
~

  
Something about Malfoy and that tone of his just made Harry see red every single time. Never mind that they'd been called on multiple carpets and been chewed up one side and down the other. Malfoy persisted in getting in his way, the perverse little fucker. He shouldered his way into the car and then into Malfoy, slamming him into the back of the car with a satisfying grunt.

  
"Hooligan." Malfoy twisted like the snake he was.

  
Harry tightened his grip. "Tightarse."

  
"Uproar." Sneered, leaving Harry holding the shoulders of an empty robe.

  
"Unfuckable."

  
Malfoy's hands slid around his throat, thumbs pressing as his lips brushed Harry's ear. "Why, Potty, I'd no idea you still cared."

  
 _Ding._

  
Bugger.

  
The car stopped, and Harry felt Malfoy's hands shift their grip, Malfoy bending as if inspecting something on Harry's neck. There was, in fact, something to inspect: something... incriminating. Something rather naughty and sordid, in fact. It took everything he had not to push Malfoy violently away as the doors opened and a pair of Magical Buildings inspectors entered.

  
"Good Lord, Potter, that's a hell of a bruise." The doors closed once more, both inspectors looking at them curiously. "You're really going to have to watch where you're flying - whipping into another _eruv_ could take your head clean off."

  
Thank the Lord. Malfoy had no idea what he was seeing. No clue. Not at all possible. "I wish they'd let us put an good coat of octarine paint on them, at the very least."

  
"The Muggle _haredi_ eschew sorcery, Potter. There's a better chance of the Cannons playing for England."

  
The elevator stopped, and the inspectors exited the car at the Atrium. Malfoy removed his hands from Harry's neck with an inscrutable look, gathering his pinstriped cloak around him.

  
"Potter."

  
Harry made himself nod as he stepped out of the car. "Malfoy." Christ. He had to be more careful. Had to. Because Malfoy, he suspected, did have a clue after all.

~

  
The doors slid closed. Draco made every effort to keep his expression in-role, but suspected some failure from the countering expression on Potter's face. After all, flying into a a bit of string did not wrap it around one's neck. Unspeakables were required to take much the same forensics courses as the aurors.

  
Ligature marking: 3mm wide lower circumferential. Light compression. Lividity present.

  
Were there matching marks around Potter's wrists? His ankles? Did Potter even know what he was doing? Draco could not help but wonder. It was not as if Draco was an innocent, and certain predilections were not exactly remarkable or unexpected. However, finding them in Harry Potter was indeed remarkable and unexpected.

  
The car stopped at the ninth floor and Draco exited into an empty corridor, went through the black door of Mysteries directly across from the lifts, and into the vestibule. Potter and a touch of the louche? A little mortification of the flesh for Saint Harry? How delicious. Was he a size queen? God damn Potter anyway, now he'd never be able to look at his broom the same way again.

  
"Artefacts - Secure Rooms."

  
The doors spun around him as he strode across the slick floor. Metaphor - Mysteries was just larded with it. For the uncertain, the floor was as slick as ice and the confusion of doors would lead them to places they might or might not have intended to go. It was sometimes a little heavy-handed, and occasionally dead wrong. After all, his own father had been as certain as a man might be of his own place in the scheme of thing, and had instead landed in Azkaban, followed by disgrace and exile.

  
He pushed open a door, entering the hallway that housed the artefacts collection and presenting his clearance to the agent on duty.

  
"Room 1013."

  
The man handed him the key in silence. Draco sometimes speculated that the desk agents were actually clockwork men; he'd never caught so much as a flicker of expression from any of them, nor had they ever spoken to him, or to anyone else that he could determine. His workroom was undisturbed, but here that hardly meant a thing - there were Unspeakables who could toss an office in five minutes flat, and put it back together in less time than that without the occupant suspecting that anyone had been in there. In fact, he fully expected that in his time in the Minister's office, someone had done exactly that. He opened his vault, then carefully removed the container within.

  
Fools sought many things, Draco mused. Yet it all boiled down to the three things. Wealth. Power. Sex. Some managed to attain great wealth, and the power that went with it, and all the fleshly delights that both might provide. Many were content with such and indeed, before the war, extortion, perversion and chicanery were as much the pass-times of his set as fox-hunting, Quidditch, and keeping wine-cellars.

  
Yet it seemed that the most dangerous of fools, not content with with wealth, power, sex and the exotic permutations thereof, added the one most calculated to drive men to madness.

  
Immortality.

  
Father, a Malfois to his toes and with the Gallic fatalism inherent in the family motto, _Même dans la mort, j'ai la victoire_ , had explained this once. He claimed that a man who thought so highly of himself that he should be immortal was already well down the road to madness, for the evidence that Great Men lived on in their deeds was tosh and foolery. History preserved something of the man, but simply go into Westminster Abbey, or to the mounds, or to any burying ground and pick a great monument.

  
"Then come back and tell me what that man did in his lifetime."

  
Draco had taken it much to heart. Even now, he liked a stroll through Highgate to keep himself leveled.

  
He opened a box made from figured mahogany and regarded the figures within. Male and female, carved in exquisite detail from some of the finest jade. The woman voluptuously depicted and her counterpart admirably endowed without being disproportionate, both carvings depicted lavish ceremonial jewelry, and each held in their raised right hand a nine-tailed whip with knotted ends, in their left hands were silver chalices extended as in offer. From the neck up, however, both had empty-eyed skulls in place of faces. The man from whom he'd acquired them had been a dealer in Central and South American magical artefacts, almost all of them Dark-natured, and he had spoken almost affectionately of these very two, calling them _'mis santitos'_ and attributing his fortune and health to their good offices.

  
He'd explained that the little saints took care of the earthly things: wealth, health (by which he meant virility) and all the things one might need to confess.

  
"Instead, I confess to them. I surround them with beauty. I dedicate to them, _si_? And _mis santitos_ , they bless me."

  
Admittedly Hector Zamorano Quintero had much to confess and plenty of deeds he might dedicate. He was a user of narcotics, consumer of fine liquors, and a man of such astounding promiscuity with both genders that he was often called _Carnero_ , Spanish for ram. He was a sMuggler, a thief, an indirect grave robber and dealer in occasional bodies both long-dead, fairly fresh or quite lively. His parties were legendary for depravity, perversion, excess, and that was all before the dessert course was served. After, one might partake of anything from simple fellation to a full-bore orgy, and indulge whatever fetishistic kink as one might find in the closet of one's civilised mind.

  
It had taken Draco months to discreetly obtain an invitation.

  
Then, weeks later, he'd been able to attract the attention of the man himself.

  
Culturing the relationship had been the painstaking work of an entire year, built on the collection and trafficking of Dark artefacts and the fact that Draco's pale skin showcased welts so beautifully. Draco did not actually mind bottoming. Unlike most men who liked to think themselves studs, Quintero was actually a toe-curling good fuck and skilled in the application of recreational pain. Quintero had taught him much and it was not without regret that Draco had identified Quintero's body just three days ago, pulled naked from the Serpentine in Hyde Park, trussed like the Christmas goose, and with a quartz crystal phallus of exceptional length and girth embedded in its rectum.

  
And once again, standing on the lido as the body was bagged, his path had intersected Potter's.

  
~

  
The cubicles were mostly empty this time of day. Between shifts the Auror's section of MLE was as quiet as a morgue, and for now that was just how Harry liked it. Ron was off somewhere doing groom stuff with Hermione and not chattering about the the wedding, or the reception, or the rehearsal, or asking - God help him - how soon Harry and Ginny would be making a run at it. Not something he needed right now.

  
What he needed right now, frankly, was a drink. Or a good hard fuck. Possibly both, as he had a ripsaw's edge on today.

  
Malfoy. Bleeding Malfoy. Just on the edge of breaking a smuggling ring and the tightarsed Brat Ponce had to land right in the middle of it. Quintero had been the linchpin of the whole organization, run from establishments in Satyric Alley catering to a certain type of pleasure-seeker. The establishments themselves rife with not only trade in flesh, but in Dark artefacts and prohibited substances. The catalogue of his finds included a skull carved of solid amethyst, a chalice made from the cranial dome of a skull, and a masque of worked silver that was close enough to a Death Eater's habit as to give him a very bad pause.

  
All of them old and Dark, and no doubt steeped in spilled blood.

  
Harry very much suspected that Malfoy, who was after all a Malfoy, was up to his pointy face in the whole thing. He'd been hearing rumours for some time concerning Quintero's favourite young man, called Argentus. When Harry had arrived at the murder scene to find Malfoy already there, there had been an almost audible click.

  
And immediately after that had been a very audible argument.

  
"Classified, my arse. Just like an Unfuckable to whip that out." Harry muttered, then paused. Freudian slip. He certainly did not want to. Um. For Malfoy to. "Do anything other than give me what he knows, shut up and bugger off."

  
Malfoy had him talking to himself.

  
Great.

  
Drink. Now. Right.

  
~

  
He studied the _santitos_ until he had a headache. Both brimmed with magic, and while that magic had roots in blood magic, it was not necessarily Dark-originated. The power had been given voluntarily, over and over, until the jade warmed to the touch and seemed to glow with an inner light. It was alluring, seductive to the point of the erotic, promising an unspecified 'more'.

  
And that in itself made him cautious.

  
Wanting something was distinct from needing, and desire distinct from both. Wanting something engendered plans to attain, whereas desire uncoupled the brain from reason and hooked it directly to pleasure. To desire was to want what was either airy self-delusion, or something as artfully crafted as a Venetian masque. In both cases ultimately false, and often capable of destroying the beguiled.

  
For instance, there were times, in his rare idle moments, that Draco did wonder what would have happened if Potter had taken his hand on the staircase before the Sorting Feast, if the years after that would have played out so much differently for both of them. What might have happened if he had met Potter on Platform 9 3/4? Would he have sorted Slytherin, just from a small bit of friendship? Certainly the House had a large roster of half-bloods throughout its history. Where might both of them be now, had it all taken a different turn somewhere?

  
Bah. The question was null. The circumstances preceding, either ordained by fate or tweaked by parties with agendas, had all but made it inevitable that Potter would do as he had done. To pursue the possibilities of the past was to beguile himself with things simply not there and never would be. Perhaps it was not Slytherin to settle for anything less than what one's highest aim could bring, but it took a Slytherin's clarity of thought to understand that some desires were simply stepping stones down the path to madness.

  
He carefully replaced the figures in their box and closed the lid, sliding it back into place in the safe and firmly shutting the door. Surrounded in every direction by six inches of cold iron, the allure of the _santitos_ was well-entombed, and Draco was appalled at the wanderings his mind had taken. Perhaps it was time for a bit of levelling, he'd get his feet back on the ground and chase after what he ought to be chasing. The contents of Quintero's 'hobby room' now resided downstairs in the evidence lockers, and that is where he thought he ought to be.

  
~

  
The stairways were seldom used, and Harry wished to remain unobserved, or at least observed by those with things they meant to hide as well. The elevators in the ministry functioned as organs of gossip. In fact, he had little doubt that the two inspectors who'd walked in on his spat with Malfoy were happily garnering pints over at the Leaky Cauldron for the tale.

  
It always came down to this, and Harry frankly hated it. The two of them ought to have some part of their lives not laid open for discussion and dissection by everyone in Wizarding Britain, but there it was. Admittedly, Harry had public opinion on his side and a bar that seemed to move ever upwards for him to jump. Malfoy, however, had seen both of his parents go into exile and his every move parsed and picked over by those who would not mind seeing the son pay and pay hard for the sins of the father. There ought to be some part of their lives that belonged to them, and to them alone.

  
Things should have been different after Hogwarts, especially this long after. Minister Shacklebolt was right, the two of them kept covering the same ground - but maybe it was less them than everyone else having a hurdle for them. They were so busy proving themselves that they'd become the Harry and Draco dog and pony show.

  
Harry paused with his hand on the time-smoothed wood of the rail, head cocked as he heard a door far below open and quick, quiet footsteps begin ascent. Nobody used the stairways unless they didn't want to be seen. Cautiously, he leaned over the railing, peering down the stairwell - while he could not see the person ascending, he could see a faint swirl of a pinstriped cloak making its way up from the level that held the MLE's common evidence lockers.

  
He put two and two together and got Malfoy.

  
That son of a bitch.

  
Quintero's contraband and other evidence from his home had been conveyed to the MLE pending a variety of tests from a Muggle DNA panel to a range of detection spells looking for blood or dark magic. If, as he suspected, Malfoy was the Argentus connected with Quintero, there were likely lashings of Malfoy DNA all over that evidence. The thought, so logical and plausible, left him breathless - but not for any other reason than the vivid pictures his own imagination obligingly provided. On the heels of how-could-he was the thought that Harry knew damned well how Malfoy could, and if he was going to be honest it was not as if he wasn't intimately acquainted with the darker side of his own drives.

  
Christ. The mental image of Malfoy as Quintero's toy sent a rush of blood to a place that Harry really did not want it to go. Argentus was alleged to be as voracious as Quintero had been priapic, and Jermyn Street buttoned-up toff Malfoy just wasn't... couldn't be...

  
Harry pressed himself against the wall, waiting. Malfoy had a lot of explaining to do and if Harry had to shake him until his eyeballs rattled in his head, he was by God going to do it.

  
~

  
Draco's heart beat a little faster as he shut and locked the door behind him, bidding the quartermaster a good evening and leaving him to his tea.

  
While his superiors and even Minister Shacklebolt knew exactly how he had infiltrated Quintero's inner circle, Draco doubted they would be understanding about what he was doing. Yes, he had written clearance to check items out of evidence and he was doing so - but not exactly in the approved manner. The investigations he wished to perform were not ones that he would undertake anywhere on Ministry property. Some items of a highly personal nature now resided in his black dragonhide Ministry briefcase. He loitered, patting the pockets of his robes as if he'd misplaced something, waiting for the corridor to clear before he slipped into the stairway. The elevators would be packed with people, some of them eager to see him crash and burn, and a few who might gladly help it along.

  
Potter might or might not be one of them. Their history was fraught enough, and Potter was quite adept at hiding his thoughts and feelings - easily as good at it as himself. So wrapped in his own thoughts, he only vaguely noted the sounds of someone on the stairs well above him. A door opened and then closed as he rounded the landing, ascending in silence.

  
All he saw before Potter knocked the breath right out of him was a furious pair of green eyes.

  
"Got a little take-away, Malfoy? Or should I call you Argentus?"

  
The phrase 'green-eyed monster' had seldom been so apt, and yet there was a flush that did not square with anger. Draco knew that flush, that look, and smiled.

  
"Dear me, Potter. It truly does take you some time to catch up, doesn't it?" he sneered. "What's put you in a self-righteous uproar this time? Someone figure out that Saint Potter's so deeply in the closet that he has a postbox in Narnia?" In the split second of panic in Potter's eyes, Draco tucked his leg through Potter's and spun him hard into the wall. "It makes you quake, doesn't it? They won't let you be anything other than the happily-ever-after boy with a Weasley bride and a passel of gingerheaded little brats to bounce on your oh-so-Little Whinging-normal knee. What would happen if they found out?" He pressed closer. Oh, dear. Poor Potty. No wonder he wasn't thinking clearly - the blood needed to operate the the higher functions of the brain was in another location entirely. His lips brushed Potter's ear. "What were you thinking about, Harry? Me as Argentus? Bound up and bent over, taking that size queen's plug that you were on about?"

  
His hand moved as fast as it ever had to catch a snitch, finding the hard ridge under those self-consciously Muggle denims and squeezing.

  
"Go ahead. Say you never wanted it," he murmured, nipping at Potter's earlobe. "You can't, can you?"

  
He might not have much use for Muggles, but they had invented the zipper and denims and boxer shorts - for which he was about to be very thankful. His fingers popped the button of Potter's denims open, and pushed the zipper down. The heat in Potter's eyes was something else entirely now, but Draco did not dare to loose his grip - shifting it instead as he took solid hold of Potter's testicles, prompting an outraged gargle. "Shhh, Potter. Wouldn't want anyone to hear you... or what I'm about to do."

  
~

  
Harry gaped as Malfoy slid to his knees, then tried to bat him away only to have a murmured charm pin his hands to the wall behind him. "Malfoy what bloody hell do you think-" Then all speech and thought ceased as Malfoy freed his prick from his boxers and licked as if it were a better treat than Honeyduke's Lipsmacker Lolly. The feeling was indescribable, so hot and wet and desperately good that Harry felt encased in heat, but at the same time there was a spur of fear in the pit of his belly. Someone could happen by, someone could see, and they... he would be Found Out.

  
Malfoy looked up at him, face flushed and lips a warm pink as they engulfed the head of his prick, sucking with a decided firmness. How was he the one getting the blowjob and Malfoy the one on his knees, but still In Charge? It was wrong. Wrong, but hot in the ways that wet dreams were hot, in the way Harry told himself would never match reality and yet right here, right now he was getting the best he'd ever had - and he was still awake. Malfoy's hand was in his own robes and any idea that Malfoy was just doing this to mess with his head was snuffed by Malfoy giving himself a happy helping hand as he sucked Harry off.

  
Even his prick was pretty, blast him.

  
"Just enjoy it, Potter." Malfoy slid his other hand under Harry's shirt, fingers teasing his nipples. Harry's rebuttal died half-formed as Malfoy took him so deep it was a wonder that he could breathe. Certainly Harry was having that problem, aching to get off and somehow keep from alerting the entire Ministry that the Boy Who Lived was being blown on a stairway landing by Draco Malfoy.

  
He should tell him to stop. To. God. To.

  
"yes fuck oh fuck please..."

  
Harry kept it a whisper, but only just. It was too good and wet and TEETH, like that. Like that. He could feel the burning in his cheeks, the need in the pit of his belly that pushed out the fear. Anything. Anything to come, to get this ache out of him. His hips rolled and flexed, unable to tear his eyes away from the sight of his prick, slick and shiny with spit in and out of Malfoy's wicked mouth. Pushing him closer, higher, hotter. His head tipping back, neck cording with a silent howl as he felt his orgasm to his bones. He'd heard the claim that so-and-so had come their brains out, but here was the real thing clawing out of him in delicious, rending pulses.

  
~

  
It was the Ecstasy of Saint Potter, and by far the most arousing site Draco could remember. Helpless and held firmly by his lust like a fish on the hook, Potter gave in and gave over. Draco watched every exquisite second and swallowed every last drop of the evidence as Potter shook and jolted, allowing himself his own release with a few deft strokes.

  
Allowing Potter - who now resembled a poleaxed ox - to watch as he caressed his sex, still licking Potter's semen from his lips as he shot into his hand.

  
Draco cleaned himself with his pocket square, putting himself to rights as Potter watched as if in a daze, his hands still pinned against the wall. He stood, shaking his robes into proper order, neatening his hair, hiding his besmirched pocket square in his briefcase. If one still looked morning-perfect after giving a blowjob, one had not given a very good one. Nor did it take long for him to put Potter in his kit, earning him a grunt of surprise as he tucked Potter's penis back into his pants, rezipping and rebuttoning him back to order in silence, content to leave him twisting his wrists against the charm that held them.

  
Draco picked up his briefcase. "Tell me, Potter, have you ever tasted your own ejaculate?"

  
Potter actually looked shocked. "Wh-? No!"

  
With a smile, Draco stepped forward - arm striking out, hand seizing in Potter's hair and pulling his mouth to Draco's his own. He nipped hard at Potter's lip, smothering Potter's protest as he forced his tongue into Potter's mouth and just as quickly darted back. "You learn something new every day."

  
~

  
"You." Harry rasped, the taste of his own spunk salty in his mouth. Merlin's balls. Malfoy- "You. YOU." Pervert. Brat. Ponce. Bastard. "YOU."

  
The prat had the effrontery to smile and hold a finger to his lips. "Shh, Potter. Who knows who could come wandering the stairwells. Oh, shut it, the charm will dissipate in a few minutes and then you can go on your way." The smile turned sly. "So glad you enjoyed yourself, Potter. When you've ordered your thoughts, do get back to me - won't you?"

  
And with a swirl of pin-striped wool, Malfoy was gone up the stairs.

  
Harry stood there even after his wrists unstuck from the wall, staring at where he'd been. He'd had strange days before, many of them with Malfoy, but this... it just...

  
Earlier this morning, Harry could have sworn that Draco Malfoy would not piss on him if his guts were afire and _would_ piss on him if he were drowning. Now he had a blowjob and a "get back to me." Not that Draco had been easy to figure out even when the agendas had been more clear cut, but this was simply incomprehensible.

  
Maybe Quintero had twisted his mind somehow. Or being an Unspeakable - odd at the best of times - had driven him around the bend. Then again, he was a Malfoy and a Black, in which case being a bit barking was probably genetic.

  
Well, shit. Now he was just chasing his tail whilst trying to unscrew the inscrutable. Now what?

  
And while he figured out what, he was fairly certain that somewhere in London, there was a drink with his name on it.

~

Two in the morning was not so late for London, perhaps, but it was late for Draco and the rude bastard flailing against his door had better have an excuse on the order of his house being afire to mitigate dragging him out of bed. He flailed an arm out, casting for his pyjama bottoms and croaking a _lumos_ so that he could find his slippers. "Once everyone knows that you live alone, your sofa becomes the parking spot for every drunk tossed out of the Leaky Cauldron, honestly."

  
Whup. Whomp. Bangbangbangbang! The drunk at his door managed to find the knocker and set about attempting to rouse the dead.

  
"I'm coming, I'm coming - keep your pants on!" He tied the drawstring, put on his slippers and grumbled his way down the hallway to the stairs and down the stairs to his front door. Somehow things like this only happened on the elf's night off. "Start singing the hedgehog song and I'll throw you right down the stairs, too." The infernal banging stopped and he threw open the door, wand in hand, peering out into the frigid night.

  
To find Harry Potter in the juniper topiary to one side of the door.

  
"For Christ's sake, Potter." How much had he had to drink, or had he simply bathed in it? "You smell like a distillery. And a brewery. And desperately cheap tobacco smoke. And floor."

  
Potter belched. "Jus' gettin' back 't you, Malfoy. I was at the Leaky Cauldron doing some shinking... shom thinking and I wanted t' ask..." Potter frowned, disengaging himself from the juniper. "Thinking. Right. I was." He lurched out of the planter and stumbled forward, almost catching himself on the jamb and catching himself instead on Draco.

  
"Drinking. Rather a large amount." Draco finished for him, manhandling him into something approaching standing. "Good Lord, you're kneewalking drunk." Draco pulled him inside and kicked the door shut before dragging him over to the settee next to the staircase. "Wait here, I think there's a sobering draught somewhere." He generally kept those in the medicine cabinet in the lavatory off the back hall, but by the time he returned, there was no Potter.

  
"All right. Fine. Whatever." Draco turned off the light in the foyer and grumbled his way back up the stairs, draught still in hand. "It's only dark o'clock in the morning, and you only woke me from a dead sleep to come pull your drunken arse out of the topiary. Inconsiderate berk. What, there wasn't a Weasley to succor Saint Potter?" He turned out the lights at the head of the stairs, slippers scuffing on the thick carpet as he went back down the hall to his room and opened the door.

  
There on his bed, face down, glasses askew, drooling and snoring was Harry Potter.

  
Draco sighed. "Of all the things you remember... of course. Naturally. And you still snore." With nose wrinkling, Draco looked him over. "Well, it's not that you haven't been here before, but you are not mucking up my bedlinens with Eau de Leaky." He went for the trainers first. "Would it have killed you to wipe your feet? It's not as if you actually do walk on water." The socks went next, then the denims, and the jumper after them - leaving Potter in his boxer-shorts and a rather whiffy Puddlemere United jersey. "Off with that, too." Draco heaved the rest of him into the bed, plucking off the rather smart looking wire frames that had replaced the cheap plastic ones and set them on the nightstand.

  
For a few moments Draco simply studied Potter, giving his hip a shove with one foot to roll him over and stop the snoring. This made the third time that Potter had turned up in his life, and Draco supposed that the third time was not a charm when the previous two had been such sterling examples of thoroughgoing disaster. Getting back into bed, he put out the light and pulled the covers up with a determination to sleep and sleep well.

  
Still, Potter had gotten back to him. That was something.

  
~

  
When Harry awoke, his mouth tasted of ale and athletic socks gone stiff and left to moulder. His cranium had hosted a bludger party. His eyes had enough sand for Brighton Beach and his innards were wobbly and had possibly come unanchored. Moreover, he was in his pants and nothing else.

  
Tied one on last night, hadn't he? Hit the bottle until it bleeding well hit him back. Groping after his glasses he paused, finding only bed where his nightstand should be. Marvellous, he'd gone home with someone. Ginny'd take her beater's bat and hammer him into the ground. Her brothers would help.

  
Dimly, he could hear the sound of a shower and... that was a familiar scent. Vetiver. Vetiver soap. Slowly Harry opened his eyes, taking in the soft, thick sheets on the half-tester bed. The cool elegance of the room itself and the familiar scents brought the memory of the night's end seeping back.

  
Malfoy.

  
Oh, bugger. What had he done? Who had he done?

  
Trying to sit up made his head spin, and sent acid flooding his mouth.

  
Malfoy'd have the snit to end all snits if he puked in his bed. Or on that carpet. Or anywhere.

  
The shower stopped, and after a few minutes a rush of vetiver-scented steam preceded Malfoy into the room. Grey silk pyjamas rode low on his hips and a towel posh enough for a Turkish bath was looped around his neck. Dra- Malfoy looked good. Even to Harry's horribly hungover brain, he looked good. Maybe he was still drunk.

  
"The Boy Who Lived can now be changed to 'The Boy Who Drank Himself Stupid Over A Blowjob.' It must have been an impressive amount of liquor, Potter." Draco's tone of voice indicated that he thought quite the opposite. "There's a sobering draught on the nightstand next to your glasses."

  
Harry managed to get into a sitting position and put his glasses on. The phial contained a liquid as green as an Avada Kedrava and was labeled "Consequences" in a hand he recognised as Narcissa Malfoy's. "That doesn't sound too pleasant." He could hear the sounds of cloth sliding against bare skin and was grateful to be too miserable to muster an erection.

  
"It's not intended to be," Draco replied. "It purifies your blood and other humours by hammering everything out of your kidneys, liver and pores into a two minute burst of condensed wretchedness and bodily emissions."

  
Harry could all but feels his liver shrivel. "Mmm. Yummy. The problem is that I'm sure it would not stay down." A peek over his shoulder have him a glimpse of Malfoy putting on his shirt, a scant glimpse of his arse visible under the shirttail. Come to think of it, a little something to settle his 'humours' might be in order.

  
"Just knock it back in the loo, it's been made so that you can't sick it back up again. Mummy's version is highly permeable, and works rather quickly." He bent over and Harry found himself wondering if Malfoy went habitually commando. "I'll be having breakfast in the study when you're... recovered."

  
~

  
Draco took just long enough in getting dressed to hear the faint hiss of the seal being broken and the contents quaffed with an audible sound of disgust. Mummy was a firm believer in paying for one's less-than-intelligent actions. And speaking of that, just how intelligent had he been in allowing Potter to sleep here, much less in his bed?

  
Definitions of insanity included repeatedly performing the same actions whilst expecting a different result. Draco had been in this very position - absent the alcohol - before. It had been an utter train wreck.

  
"I'm not expecting anything," he muttered to himself on his way down the stairs. "I'm not expecting anything at all."

  
Because, frankly, Potter was as crippled by his upbringing and celebrity as Draco was hobbled by his own past and notorious family. Draco's gibe had not been an empty one; Harry's desperation to live a Little Whinging normal life - despite his utter antipathy for the place - was rather firmly at odds with his sexuality. Draco, born Wizarding, had simply been told that Wives Understood Things, then had to figure out what there was to understand. The idea of his parents (his father) doing anything (with Snape) of the sort was...

  
"Not a thought to entertain before breakfast." On certain subjects, he could figuratively stuff his fingers in his ears and LaLaLaLaLa with the best of them. "And at the moment, you have other things to think about." He raised his voice, slightly. "Wimsy, breakfast for two in the study. Porridge with vanilla ice cream, coddled eggs with bacon and herbs, toast, butter, and coffee service."

  
The table had been set with the coffee service before he even opened the door, but his real interest was safely locked away in the cold-iron trunk under the library table. Pouring himself a cup of coffee, he unlocked the chest and removed his briefcase. Technically, he had not done anything against Ministry policy by removing these items, as they were items that were associated with him specifically as Argentus. He was protecting his cover, if anyone wanted to quibble about it. Most of them were not even magical, when you came down to it, but all were tainted with magic because of what he had been doing with them, or what Quintero had been doing to him with them.

  
The shower upstairs started as he opened the bag, removing another bag nested inside of it, which he set on the table. It was what some might call a 'doctor's bag' - black and two-handled, a purposeful looking thing in the finest of Spanish leather. Opening it, the first thing inside was an elaborately tooled silver carnevale masque, the empty eye-holes turned up in eternal mirth. He picked it up, regarding it briefly before setting it on the table, and unpacked the other items that did not need to be held by the Ministry, and one that did that they'd never see.

  
It had not even - technically - been in evidence. It had never even been recorded or numbered, or listed.

  
Sounds. Five-point chains. Leather cuffs and straps. Spreader bars. A most intimate restraint made of shining steel. A leather tawse, a braided whip and a martinet, coiled and waiting. A white candle. Oil. And the padded velvet sack, heavy with a spectacular example of pre-Columbian jade work: thick-shafted, generously round-headed with a cunningly sculpted foreskin, resting on a base formed by exaggerated testicles. It was absolutely realistic - if larger than life - and oddly warm to the touch.

  
Much like the _santitos_ , actually.

  
Draco picked up his coffee, sipped it and frowned. Cold. How long had he been sitting here and stroking the thing? Long enough for Potter to have finished his shower and be coming down the stairs. He simply set it on the table as there was not enough time to put it back into the bag and hide it.

  
The look on Potter's face when he opened the study door was something he would savour for a long time after.

  
"Good morning again, Potter."

  
"Malfoy. I normally have eggs and toast for breakfast, you know." His eyes were riveted on the sculpture and the accouterments around it.

  
"Well, there go my plans for the morning. We'll just have to settle for Wimsy's coddled eggs and such." Draco discreetly reheated his coffee. "Really, you can stop staring at any time."

  
"Wimsy?" Potter tore his eyes away from the phallus. "I didn't know you had an elf."

  
"Some elves preferred a more traditional situation, there's a hiring office for those who do not wish to be clothed." Wimsy was a respectable elf, and Draco kept him in tea-towels, with damask table-cloth wraps for formal occasions. "The time-off laws still apply, however. Wimsy was not at home when you... made your appearance."

  
Potter had the grace to turn red. "About that...?"

  
Draco lifted an eyebrow. "Well, you did say you were getting back to me." Potter, red and silent. "For fuck's sake, have some coffee. Wimsy should have breakfast in a minute. Real food, not the the magicked crap."

  
Potter poured, taking his black with sugar - still looking over the items on the table as the breakfast tray appeared. His face was completely unreadable.

  
"Eat, Potter. Consequences will wring you out." Draco helped himself to two coddled eggs and buttered toast. The porridge and ice cream was for Potter, who took a bowl.

  
"You remembered."

  
"Some things stick with you." Draco stifled further conversation by jamming his toast points into his egg and eating. Good Lord, he had no idea that he could _do_ maudlin.

  
~

  
They ate in silence, unwilling to look back or speak of themselves.

  
It had been a year after the battle, Draco qualifying for the Unspeakables. Harry and Ron both bucking for the aurors.

  
It had been a train wreck.

  
Both of them sneaking around. Both of them scared stupid of being found out. They'd fought as often as they fucked. In the end, it had been less of a breaking up than a mutual repulsion and ceasing to sneak about and fuck. Harry had told himself it was for the best, that it was some kind of leftover something from Voldemort that placed the attraction there in the first place. It hadn't been real - not like the friendship he had with Ron, Ginny, and Hermione. In time, except when the ran into each other in the course of their duties, he'd even stopped thinking about Draco.

  
Malfoy. He meant Malfoy.

  
Who had remembered that he liked his oatmeal with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.

  
Looking at Malfoy was making him think things. Looking at the stuff on the table that was not breakfast was making him think other things. Christ.

  
"How's your Mum and Dad?" He had to say something. Slytherins read things into silence.

  
Malfoy looked surprised, but answered. "Mummy loves Spain, actually. She's really taken to it like a duck to water. Father is a little less enthusiastic, but the climate is doing him a great deal of good and so is the exercise of a hobby vineyard."

  
Harry had seen the sequelae of Cruciatus exposure, even experienced a mild case of it first hand. Draco's parents had massive exposures to it, so while exile had been part punishment, for them the warm climate was also a mercy. His gaze drifted to the silver masque.

  
"Are you him? Argentus?" Christ. Quintero was a madman, Harry knew from the mark around his neck. What had Draco been thinking?

  
"I am. Sort of." Malfoy hedged. "Argentus was a part I played - a cover. A rich, bored young blueblood, dead-ended in the Ministry and looking for some thrills."

  
Harry looked at the stupendous rock cock in the middle of the breakfast table and raised an eyebrow. "Part of your cover?"

  
Malfoy finished his eggs before replying. "Yes, and no. Yes, part of my cover was a hedonistic upper class twit, but for the rest... I like it. I enjoy the hell out of it, to give you the unstinting truth."

  
"Are you sure it's not something, you know, left over? A trauma? A curse?" He knew that wizards did some things very, very differently, but- "Maybe even being... being bent is is something..."

  
"Potter, I've known for certain that I'm bent since I was twelve years old." Malfoy's expression was pitying, and Harry looked down at his oatmeal going cold in the bowl. "It's not a curse any more than being born with a certain eye colour, or with magic. I know you were Muggle raised, but people seem to have kept a lot of things about our world from you, even now. You're thinking the way that your relatives did. All this-or-that. Black or white. One or zero. There's more than that."

  
How much he wanted to believe that.

  
"You know, I used to envy you, Harry. You had all these people who adored you, rallied round you. You were The Boy Who Lived, and even if you never did another thing in your life, you'd still be adored just for that." Harry looked up at him in surprise. Draco envied him? "But then, after, you were still the Boy Who Lived, and all those adoring people were keeping you in the same cage. You never got to be anyone else but Harry Potter The Boy Who Lived, and not even fucking Draco Malfoy on London Bridge could break you loose."

  
That was uncomfortably close to the bone. Then again, Draco had a talent for it.

  
"Tell me you never thought the same, Harry. At least I was free as they didn't give a shit if I lived or died."

  
The last spoonful of oatmeal went down on will alone, but Harry could not say that Draco had anything arse-to-front. "All right, Herr Doktor Freud. Fair enough. Now suppose you explain whips, chains and huge stone wangers to me?"

  
A sniff with nose in the air. "I prefer Jung."

  
"Not. The. Point. Draco." Sometimes he really had to wonder just now much of Draco's self-purported ignorance of all things Muggle was a line of bull.

  
"I'll show you mine if you show me yours?"

  
Harry reluctantly conceded, the mark around his neck faded to a greenish-yellow. "I went to a Muggle club. A bath-house. For men. There was a bloke there, and he... um... did things. I was watching and-"

  
"You wanted to try them." Draco filled in the pause.

  
Harry nodded. "Only... it wasn't good. He moved too fast, and by the time I understood what he was doing, he had a cord around my neck." He paused. "Part of it was good. I mean, I came, but-"

  
"The penis is inclined to cooperate with anything frictional," Draco interrupted. "So having an orgasm is not indicative of enjoyment. Back when hangings were common, men would become erect and ejaculate when the trap was dropped - you can't tell me they were having a jolly time!" Muggles really needed a much more graphic form of sexual education. "I mean sex is like chocolate; even when it's bad it's still passably good."

  
Harry's coffee went right out his nose. "Christ!"

  
"Look, I saw how it was when I pinned your hands to the wall. Harry, I know how it is because I like the trip. It wasn't the primary reason for my association with Quintero, but it was a toe-curling good benefit." Draco paused. "The man at the bathhouse was Quintero, wasn't it."

  
Crap. "Yes, it was. I just didn't know it at the time, I think he was wearing a partial glamour. I recognised the corpse by the pinky ring."

  
"If he'd known who you were, and he probably did, he was likely trying to kill you. You didn't tell anyone?"

  
Harry shook his head. "Not something I would want to get around, so no."

  
Draco was quiet, then asked. "What's the last thing you remember?"

  
"I woke up. I'd shot in my pants, my throat hurt and some bloke had wrapped me in a blanket, and put me on a sofa in the manager's office." It had been humiliating, worse than humiliating, but at least the men hadn't known who he was. "The manager said that Quintero had been being too rough on newbies. They'd tossed him out and banned him permanently."

  
"Do you know where he went after that?"

  
Harry could see where Draco was going. "No, but I know that he was dead in the Serpentine by dawn - that was seven hours later. Draco, nobody can know where- what I was doing."

  
"What happened next?"

  
"The manager kept me around for a bit, until he thought I was all right to leave, and called a cab for me, and I went to the Leaky Cauldron - took a room."

  
"What time did you check in?"

  
"Just a bit after midnight, had something to eat in the bar and went up around one-thirty." And something to drink. Kind of a lot of that.

  
"Quintero was already dead. He'd been in the water for at least six hours when he was found. Someone killed him within an hour of his leaving the club."

  
Harry could feel himself sag in relief.

  
"Where's the bath house?"

  
"It's at #1 Fairchild in Shoreditch. He left and picked up someone else?"

  
"Or picked up someone who was not much enthused about being picked up." Draco nodded, jumping up from his seat and pacing. "There are cameras all over London, but we didn't know where to start looking!" He stopped, looked at Harry. "I was tipped by an informant, that's all I'll say. My superiors know my proclivities."

  
For a moment, Harry was tempted to snatch the information and run with it, to make his mark with it before Malfoy. In the next moment, he let it go. It wasn't worth the trouble it would cause or the questions it would raise. "Right then. Get on in and tell them."

  
Draco paused. "You're sure."

  
Harry nodded. "Yeah. Just put this stuff away before you go. You'll... scandalise the elf, or something. I don't suppose I arrived with a broom?"

  
Draco swept everything off the table and into a bag. "No, just staggering into topiary."

  
Harry noted the particular care he took with the jade cock, and wondered why Draco couldn't see it for what it was, or what Quintero had been doing to him with it. "That needs to go back where it came from, however." Draco's hands visibly tightened on the thing. "It's a cultural artefact, pre-Columbian, and full of willingly given blood energy from who knows how many - and it's making you think things. You know it."

  
For a moment, he could see a resistance in Draco's expression, then he passed it over, placing it in Harry's hands. "Take it where it belongs, Harry. There are a couple of other artefacts, but I think they'll need to be destroyed, or at least put in the Room of Unfinding."

  
"I'll drop it off right after leaving here." One was not technically supposed to apparate whilst flying, but there was no other way to get to the Atlantic Rift from here. He was going to drop it where it belonged all right. "Could I borrow a broom?"

  
"Surely. The broom cupboard's in behind the mirror in the foyer." The bag went back under the desk, and Harry's gaze followed it.

  
"Potter." Said firmly.

  
Harry blinked and looked at him.

  
"Do you still want to try?"

  
That was a very open ended question, wasn't it? Yet, he had an answer. "Yes. I do still want to try."

  
They walked out into the foyer to collect their brooms, Draco obviously thinking things through. "When you've been sober for seventy-two hours, come back here. We'll see what happens."

  
When you got down to it, he couldn't ask for better than that kind of honesty. "See you Friday, then."

  
He waited until Draco was out of sight before he mounted his broom and apparated, popping out into clear blue skies, a brisk wind and white-capped seas. The thing under his arm was warm with stolen life-force, beguiling him with promises of power and pleasure, wealth enough for goblins, and he could even live forever...

  
It fell, tumbling end over end into the sea, making only a tiny splash - hardly visible this far up.

  
Harry turned for home, he had some camera footage to watch, and things to think about.

  
~

He confessed, of course. Unspeakables said that truth might be hidden, but only on a temporary basis. It was rather humiliating to find out that they already knew he'd been hoarding the _santitos_ for himself. This was balanced by the praise he won for not using them as some might, seduced into believing that all they offered would come without a steep price.

  
A test, passed, and nothing more.

  
His senior officer, a man called only 'Six' escorted silently him to his workroom, and from there to the vestibule, the statues' case in Draco's arms.

  
Six spoke softly, "The Room of Unfinding."

  
The doors spun. Draco blinked as one more was added to the usual twelve.

  
"Will I be able to find this again, sir?"

  
"That, agent, would rather defeat the purpose." Six opened the door to a plain, white-painted room empty of furnishings but for a battered folding table in the middle of it. "However, nothing remains lost forever, a fact to forget at your peril. Enter, please."

  
He stepped through, looking curiously back at Six. "Sir?"

  
"Place the items on the table and then return, agent." Six's face and voice could well have been an automaton's. "I'll wait here."

  
Draco stepped inside, noting that the room, for all its emptiness to the naked eye, _sounded_ full. There was a muffled quality to his steps despite the appearance of a bare tiled floor, and a certain close mustiness akin to that of a stuffed attic. This was the Department of Mysteries, after all, and nothing should ever be taken at face value.

  
He set the case on the table, aware of a terrible reluctance to let it go at all - and simply because of that, he turned his back upon it. It only promised, and those promises were all for things that he did not want, or did not need, and there was one that they could never deliver. For all that, simply moving toward the door of the room felt as if he was struggling against a current that would pull him back to the table. If he returned to that table, then he would be lost.

  
Reaching out, Draco clutched the doorframe and pulled himself through with desperate strength, finally popping free like a cork from a bottle. He landed on his knees, shaking and drenched in sweat as Six closed the door. It almost had him. It was that close.

  
"What would you have done if I had not let go?" he asked, voice shaking.

  
"The same thing I have done with other agents before you." Six replied. "I would have closed the door."

  
~

  
Harry presented his report on Hector Zamorano Quintero (44, male, Panamanian citizen, deceased, homicide, no next of kin) to Deputy Minister Robards.

  
"After leaving the baths, he was spotted on camera near another establishment back of Waterloo station, where he left with a known hire-boy. They went to the young man's rooms, where - perhaps feeling he had nothing to fear from a Muggle - Quintero allowed the young man to tie him up and engage in an activity called 'breath play'. The young man had little experience with the garrote and, applying too much pressure high on the neck, cut off the blood supply and broke the hyoid bone, resulting in Quintero's death. He conveyed the body to the Serpentine in a shopping trolley, playing off that Quintero's body was a friend who'd had too much to drink and that he was conveying him home. It's being called death by misadventure, though the young man will face charges of desecration, failure to call for medical care, and criminal negligence."

  
Minister Robards took the file from Harry, reading it over. "And Mr. Malfoy has refused to name his informant?"

  
"In so many words, sir." Draco would do well on the stage, if he ever became tired of the Unspeakables. They'd managed a very public row which had been successful enough as a ruse to require another trip to the Minister's office.

  
"Someday, Mr. Potter," Robards looked over the tops of his horn-rimmed glasses, "the two of you will have to stop being quite so childish about your respective territories. It's an informant, not a teddy-bear."

  
"Yes, sir."

  
~

  
If nothing else, setting up the study gave Draco an activity to calm his nerves and to test his inventiveness. IF Harry showed up. IF Harry wanted to try again.

  
IF they could pull it off this time. IF they could stop being the berks they were in school.

  
"Tea, Wimsy. Fortnum's Picadilly blend, pepper cheese and ham sandwiches, cream puffs." Draco paused. "Make a little extra, please."

  
Just in case. He wasn't expecting anything, he told himself. At worst, he'd be having tea by himself. At best, Harry would actually show up sober. Anything after that would simply have to be played by ear. He went upstairs to change.

  
~

  
Hermione had always accused him of not studying, Harry could only think of how she'd stare now as he sat at his kitchen table with a pile of books in front of him. He could not, however, rightly imagine what she would do if she got a look at the titles.

  
'Come Hither: A Commonsense Guide to Kinky Sex.'

  
'The Bottoming Book: How to Get Terrible Things Done to You By Wonderful People.'

  
'S&M 101: A Realistic Introduction.'

  
'Knotty Boys: Learning the Ropes.'

  
'Magical Kink: A Guide for Wizards and Witches."

  
And just because he was not especially well experienced, a copy of 'The Joy of Gay Sex.'

  
Hermione'd have him locked up, or she'd out-study him from pure swot pride. He could not decide which was the more frightening of the two.

  
He'd been missing out, according to the books. The last two days had been spent working, studying and wrangling with more wayward stiffies than he'd had since contending with the rowdy hormones of puberty.

  
The clock chimed, and Harry closed the book. He did want to try again, and maybe they could work something out this time. At worst, Draco always put on a good tea.

  
~

  
The fire crackled in the grate, and the tea cart remained between them, its contents satisfyingly demolished with a few cream puffs left over. They'd gone over the contents of the bag; looked at the restraints, handled the the martinet, the tawse and the dogwhip. Draco had explained the use of each item, demonstrating them on himself, or lightly on Harry.

  
Cream puffs at tea, however, had a stronger pull. Wimsy's had the added attraction of being dipped in chocolate.

  
Draco set his cup back in the saucer, regarding Harry.

  
"We could do this later, you know. Sometimes a tea is just a tea."

  
Harry shook his head. "I said I wanted to. I do. I bought books and studied for two days."

  
"Two whole days? Imagine that." By way of reply, Harry hit him full in the face with a cream puff. "Oh, now you're going to pay. Cream puffs don't grow on trees, you know." He spoke whilst wiping cream puff from his face with his fingers.

  
Harry watched him, cheeks flushed and a perceptible rise in his trousers - waiting. Oh-ho. That's how it went, then.

  
Draco stood, holding out two fingers besmirched with cream puff. "Lick it off. Clean up your mess." His prick gave a jolt as Harry parted his lips, licking almost delicately at his fingers. "Good... good. Want some more? Here. Suck." He gave himself an ostentatious rub through the placket of his trousers as Potter treated his fingers most promisingly, a rough sucking with a slight edge of sharp teeth along the edge of his fingertips.

  
Harry released his fingers. "More."

  
Groping behind him, Draco found the tea cart and the plate of cream puffs. God, how would he ever look at pastry again without getting hard? With one hand unbuttoned his trousers, with the other he sent a cream puff to its doom.

  
~

  
Zippers.

  
Draco really needed to learn about zippers. Harry helped him, inadvertently sending one button flying under the sofa, another rolling along the baseboards. Hmm. It seemed that Draco did indeed like to go without pants. He smeared cream puff over his prick, and Harry could not let it go without a taste.

  
Those cream puffs were sin on a plate. Maybe there was an upside to having an elf.

  
He'd never really imagined what sucking a prick would taste like, never having imagined himself sucking one. Even without cream puff, Harry decided after a few minutes, Draco would still taste all right. Salty, musky, with a stray bit of vetiver, smooth-skinned and hot. He yanked Draco's trousers down, one hand giving that stellar arse a good feel as Draco wound fingers in his hair.

  
"Like it? Lord, you look so good sucking me off." It was gratifying to hear Draco breathless, moaning - it made him harder than iron. "Like that. Suck it like a straight boy. Mmmjusssst... you're ohhhverdressed."

  
Draco dropped, toppling Harry backward onto the carpet, pushing up his shirt - then smashing a cream puff onto his chest and then devouring him like dessert, eyes bright, lips rimmed with cream and melting chocolate. This was the best game Harry'd ever played; it involved dessert and orgasms, with the added attraction of ripping each others clothing off.

  
"Mmmmmalfoy." So that's why men had nipples. Harry curled his fingers into Draco's hair and pulled him off of it with reluctance.

  
"Potter?" Draco arched up, rubbing himself wantonly over Harry's jeans.

  
"You're overdressed." He took the collar of Draco's broadcloth shirt and sent small ivory buttons scattering everywhere. It was utterly confounding that he worse an actual undershirt whist going commando.

  
~

  
For a moment, Draco gaped at Harry in disbelief and then burst out laughing. A Jermyn Street bespoke shirt did not come cheap, but oh it was bloody marvellous to have it ripped from his body! And what, pray tell was 'going commando', and further, what did it have to do with his underclothes?

  
It could wait, as with the aid of the brilliant zipper on his denims, Harry was pantsed in truly record time, the ratty old trainers chucked carelessly over-shoulder with a resulting squawk of dismay from a portrait somewhere. It didn't matter that his own trousers were wrecked and hanging from the lighting fixtures; they were skin-to-skin naked, covered in cream puffs and - God - kissing.

  
It was a wet dream. It had to be. It was that good.

  
"Mmm. Want to show you something." Harry'd been studying, hadn't he? Maybe a little practical would encourage more in-depth appreciation. It made Draco a little weak in the knees to press against Harry, frotting against him.

  
"All right." Harry was kneading his buttocks, something that always drove him delightfully mad. "What do I do?"

  
"It requires a cream puff - and you bending over." Draco braced for an explosion, receiving only a long, weighing look.

  
"Cream puff?"

  
Draco nodded. "Cream puff." One already rested in his hand. "Bend over the hassock?" Harry did so, giving a nervous look over one shoulder. Really, he had the most exquisite bottom. Not a thing to be bashful about. The cream puff met it's best doom on that delectable arse, and Draco dove on it as if it was the last cream puff to be made forever.

  
~

  
Harry suspected the noise he made to be not so much passionate than it was silly. After all, there was cream puff in the gap of his bum and and and then he was not in much condition to think at all. Draco was... his mouth... and he was _eating_ him back there!

  
And it was so good, so desperately good that Harry could not do anything but hold on to that hassock for dear panting life. Every nerve in his body was come to life, his prick rubbing against the cool leather as his spine twitched in time with Draco's lapping.

  
Tongue. Finger. Pressing, rubbing, then opening. He could feel his breath hitch in surprise, his arse tightening on reflex. He almost felt himself drowning in heat, gulping air as his back arched.

  
"Good, Harry?" Draco murmured against his skin, fingers in him. Really in him and rubbing something that was all kinds of good.

  
He nodded, groping after speech. "Good. Wicked good. More?"

  
Even _that_ 'more'. He would do that.

  
His breath hitched as Draco opened him still further, whispering a charm that sent trickles of something oily down the backs of Harry's thighs.

  
"That 'more'? You're sure, Harry?" Draco pressed against him, as hard as himself. "I want you to say it, if you want it."

  
How much of the heat in him was sheer need and how much mild mortification, Harry could not say. He wanted to be fucked, wanted Draco to fuck him, it was the simplest thing in the world.

  
"Fuck me." Even hearing the words, knowing he said them was a shock. "I want you to fuck me."

  
And it was, he found, the absolute truth.

  
~

  
Oh, yes, hearing those words did leave him breathless, his hands fitting to Harry's hips and savoring the sensation of pressing against him. "You're sure."

  
"Fuck, I'm going to go mad if you don't. What _are_ you doing?" Harry wriggled like a Satyric Alley strumpet.

  
Draco curved his fingers again, savouring the slippery clench around them. "You mean that?"

  
Harry's forehead head hit the hassock with a desperate groan, his back arching. "Nnnnowwwww fuckdraconowplease!"

  
Wet dreams were made of this, but on the off chance that Harry's arse had remained unbreached or had rude treatment, Draco elected to take the route of slow torture. Frankly, he liked the sound of begging. He opened Harry time and time again with his fingers, then smacked his bottom hard to tighten him up again. He licked, teasing that tight pucker until Harry threatened to come on the hassock and leave Draco wanting.

  
"Stroppy, stroppy Harry." Draco pressed, murmuring. "Here... a little bit..." He had to pause, because Harry felt so good around him. Smooth, so amazingly hot and hungry for it. He could understand now why some men liked to go on top all the time. "Can't... let you have everything ahhh all at once..."

  
"Ohhh, yes you can!" Harry bucked his clever, clever arse and Draco surged to meet him. "Want it hard... do me hard, Draco. I can take it. I want-"

  
The first thrust stopped everything except a delicious mewl. Oh, Harry was not lying when he said he could take it. He lit up like a Christmas tree, a flush rolling down to his shoulders, hips bucking hard to meet each thrust, to take as much as he could get. Draco braced one arm on the hassock and stroked deep and long, eyes half-lidded in bliss.

  
~

  
Harry held on for dear life. Draco folded over him chest-to back, fucking him and for the life of him Harry could not figure out why he'd never had Draco go on top before. Moaning without shame, he urged Draco on, writhing with him from the hassock to the floor without so much as a hitch in their rhythm.

  
"It was never just a thing, I swear it." The admission was wrenched from him as his pleasure built to a scorching, unbearable heat. It had been a sick, fucked-up mess on both parts, but it had not ever been just a thing. He could feel himself tightening, at the exquisite point of arousal where the whole world was Draco filling him, his thrusts faster, more desperate pushing him to the edge and over.

  
The blowjob on the stairs paled in comparison, and this time he did not need to be quiet and frankly he didn't care if they startled half of London and rousted out every auror in the MLE because Christ and if he died coming he'd be right pissed because he wanted this again and again...

  
~

  
Draco gave a ragged groan, fingertips clutching hard, moving for his own pleasure as Harry spent without a hand on him and howl fit to wake the portraits. The heat in the pit of his belly, a coil of desperate tension in the small of his back, and Harry writhing under him-

  
His last thrust broke with a shivering buck, a release that was as much desperation as desire. Spending until he thought he'd lose his mind from the pleasure of it.

  
Some long, drifting time later, they lay spooned on the carpet before the fire. "Not a 'thing'?" he murmured against Harry's shoulder.

  
"No. Not a thing." Harry paused. "I wouldn't do that to you. Not to anyone. I know what it's like to be set up and used. We were both... we were... pretty messed up after All That."

  
"I think the word you're looking for is 'traumatised'." It was true, most of the first year after the Battle of Hogwarts was a sick blur to him until he had been accepted for training. "We're older now. More sensible, surely, than we were then. Eighteen seems... impossibly young now."

  
"Still, we can't tell what's going to happen, can we?" Draco could feel tension seep back into Harry's shoulders. "People still have expectations and-"

  
Draco shook him. "Stop that. Look, we're trained in subterfuge. Discretion is undercover work, if you want to think of it that way. As for expectations... well. Yes, we're both going to marry. We will love our wives, and we will love and protect our children. This isn't the Muggle world, Harry, and a lot of people just don't talk about these things around Muggle-raised because there are some odd prejudices out there."

  
Harry snorted, likely ready to air opinions about the wizards and peculiar prejudices. Draco pressed a finger over Harry's lips.

  
"I'd bet that if you asked Ginevra's Aunt Tessie, she'd set you straight, so to speak, and never mind any tender sensibilities of anyone in earshot." Harry turned to look at him, appalled. "That's what dotty spinster aunts are _for_ , Harry."

  
~

  
Wizards were really, truly weird. Harry could not imagine asking any woman if custom allowed him to have... well, he was not certain what he was having other than it not being a 'thing'. Still, he'd end up asking anyway, and there was time. Ginny was keen on working up to first string with the Harpies, and he was still a very junior auror.

  
There was time.

  
He put an arm over Draco, drawing him close for a kiss.

  
He'd leave it at that.

  
~fin~

 

 _**Happy Yule Balls, yumekutteikt!** _

 


End file.
